Article September 30, 1911 Issue

TRUTH MAKES FREE

ALFRED THORPE.

The saying of our Lord, "Yet shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," can be best understood as one studies Christian Science. The Jews, to whom Jesus was speaking, had believed his sayings, but were still misty in their thought as to their relationship to him and to the truth. There is among all Christian believers a certain appreciation of God's love to man, but it is not of such a character, in most cases, as to relieve from the bondage of sickness and sin. The writer was for many years a lay-preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is understood by the orthodox church to which he belonged, but he failed to grasp the full significance of the saying that Christ is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever," and that consequently, whatever had been God's treatment of the sons of men in the past, so it would be now, if we would but have it so.

Away back in my mind was the thought that somehow things ought to be different, and that the sick in body should be able to look to God for relief as the morally and spiritually sick did. I remember once, as I was getting up into the pulpit of a mission church, thinking, as I looked upon the congregation, what a grand thing it would be if the preachers of today could heal as they did in the days of Christ, not knowing (for I was then in ignorance on this matter) that the love of God has ever been at hand for the relief of mankind and that it has always been as easy for the true Christian to say, "Arise, and walk," as to say "Thy sins be forgiven thee." The experience of my family and myself is, that whereas before we began the study of Christian Science we were constantly, one or another of us, in the hands of the physician or surgeon, now we are absoutely free from any desire to call in such aid. By the grander understanding that we now have of our Father-Mother God, we realize more completely our relationship to divine Love, and so are able, by God's grace, to keep under the body and bring it into subjection, not only as to sin, but as to sickness. Sometimes error tries to assert itself in the form of sickness, but we now invariably turn to the "great Physician," and we find that according to our faith it is done unto us, and the enemy is quickly overcome.

The greatest good that comes to us is, however, in the fact that we are able to grasp more fully the significance of the apostle's declaration that "God is love." The more completely we realize or know the truth, the more completely are we rendered free from discordant conditions of every kind; thus verifying Jesus' saying, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

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